Games of Pleasure (10 page)

She had made love to him in
payment,
already planning what she would do the next morning. The idea burned and hurt, driving a desperate rage. He had refused her a loan, so she had purchased what she needed from him with her body.

It had taken several days of hard work before he could walk out of Wyldshay, but he had left all his ongoing business in the hands of Mr. Davis. If any emergency arose, the steward would send for instructions. Her Grace the Duchess of Blackdown thought he had come to London to pursue a little vice. Meanwhile, every mama in the home counties already knew by now that Lady Belinda Carhart had settled on Asterley, and that Lord Ryderbourne must still be looking for a bride.

The excitement would be intense. Myriad invitations would follow.

Too bad that he intended to disappoint them!

His butler entered like a ghost, seeing to His Lordship's every last comfort and arranging the room for the party later that evening. Ryder barely noticed him. He ate alone in the dining room, leaving half the dishes untasted, then lingered over brandy as he waited for Lindsay Smith and the others to arrive.

He had sent his invitation to a select group of young rattles not generally so honored. His summons would be promptly obeyed, even if he offered them nothing more than a convivial game, some excellent wine, and his own company. No doubt every one of them had canceled other engagements and been thrilled to do so.

The clock struck the hour. The front knocker rapped, followed by the tread of shoes in the hall. Ryder set himself to be witty, to be welcoming, and to listen. His butler had seen to everything else, especially the unending flow of fine wine from one of London's best cellars.

By midnight half a dozen young men shouted over the latest town gossip—the wagers, the races, the duels and entanglements, the latest crop of marriageable young ladies.

Lord Dartford, more sober than the rest, raised his glass. “A toast to Virtue, sirs!”

“Let's toast Sin, instead,” Ryder said gently. He had hardly touched his own wine. “Her charms are surely more interesting?”

The guests roared with laughter. “To Sin!” the men bellowed. “To Sin!”

“And to the most glorious Sinner of them all!” someone yelled. “Miracle Heather!”

Heads tipped back as every man drained his glass once again—a hint of envy or lust or frustration in each drunken face.

His blood burning, Ryder forced himself to relax and signal for more wine. He had invited the men here for this. It would hardly further his cause if he threw over the table and punched out his guests. Yet he felt as if he were holding back a storm.

“Damned unlikely name, if you ask me.” Lindsay Smith had slumped back in his chair and was staring into his glass. “Who was ever christened Miracle?”

“Harlots don't need
christened
,” a wit said. “Just rogered!”

Every man there guffawed without noticing the storm cloud gathering around the head of their host.

“I don't recall the lady,” Ryder said. “She is pretty?”

“Gad, my lord! A raving beauty. Your Lordship must have seen her around town?”

“I couldn't say,” Ryder replied. “I've been in the country.”

Smith leaned forward with conspiratorial intimacy, his focus blurred. “Alas, she's too toplofty for the likes of me! Never kept company with less than a peer's son. Went off to Dorset with the Earl of Hanley just recently—the damned rogue!”

“A relationship of long standing?” At the mention of Hanley's name, Ryder's fists had clenched beneath the table.

“A few months,” Dartford said. “Hanley was besotted. Yet he came back to town a few days ago without her.”

“Perhaps Miracle Heather has found a new lover?”

“If she has,” Smith responded, “the man better look out for the earl. They say he's fit to be tied. To be so publicly embarrassed by a whore? Damme, sir! This game's yours, as well.”

Dartford swept up the coins. Ryder stood up. The party was over. Dartford had emptied everyone's pockets, including those of his host. Of course, unlike some of the others, Ryder could afford it.

In ones and twos the guests lurched onto the street, praising the best damned evening any of them could remember—not counting the time six naked women had served the drinks at Lord Asterley's, of course. Ryder watched them go and wondered briefly how Lady Belinda would feel about that.

The only sober man among them, Dartford was the last to leave. He hesitated for a moment as he pulled on his gloves. A keen intelligence lay behind the man's bland gaze.

“Rumors are already on the fly about the cause of Hanley's comeuppance,” he said.

“I barely know the earl these days,” Ryder said. “It's no concern of mine.”

“Then you've been out of circulation too long, Ryderbourne. If you'd ever met Miracle Heather, you wouldn't soon forget her. They say Hanley went up to her rooms and smashed furniture, then raved at the maid like a madman.” Dartford took up his cane and smiled. “Were the rooms rented furnished? You should know. They were in Blackdown Square.”

The front door swung shut behind him. Ryder closed his eyes for a moment, then he threw back his head and laughed till it hurt. Blackdown Square! For God's sake! She had rented rooms from the duchy?

Somewhere, in the interminable records of his affairs, her name might even appear as a tenant—though it was more likely that Hanley had used an agent to rent the place for her.

It was late. Almost morning. Ryder strode straight up the stairs to his bedroom, abandoning the foul ruins of his study to be scrubbed clean by the servants.

The slipper gleamed on his bedside table.

Whatever it took, he would turn London upside down until he found her—and damn Lord Hanley to hell!

IT rained on and off for three days. Miracle walked steadily north, finding thick hedges or empty barns—and once a hollow oak tree—where she could curl up in his cloak when darkness finally descended after the long summer evenings. It was damp, but not particularly cold, yet sleep came fitfully, or not at all.

Whenever the clouds parted, she gazed up at the indifferent heavens. Jupiter spun like a top, taking nine hours and fifty-six minutes to revolve about its own axis, at a huge distance from the sun. The sun was eighty-one million miles from the Earth. If she walked twenty miles a day straight up into the sky, she would take over ten thousand years to reach it. Yet the distance to the stars was immeasurably greater. More in miles than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world, more than all the threads of cotton ever spun in all the mills of Derbyshire.

And she, Miracle Heather, was just an infinitesimal speck in all that infinite universe. A rather damp, undignified speck, with no money and almost nothing left to eat, absurdly clad in a silk dress. The thieves had taken everything else: horse, saddle, saddlebags, her spare clothes and supplies—even the riding habit—everything except a comb, a bit of bread and cheese, and the few contents of her pockets.

In comparison to the universe, of course, all that was splendidly insignificant. She hugged his cloak more tightly about her shoulders and laughed up at the vast, starry sky.

 

 

THE maid scraped a deep curtsy, her face shining like a beet. Her hands, too, were red, as if she had just finished scrubbing something.

“It's all right.” Ryder smiled at her. “No one's going to turn you out onto the streets.”

The girl mumbled something inaudible. A pretty and sadly insignificant creature, who had probably come up to London fresh from the country.

“Your mistress left for Dorset with Lord Hanley and didn't return. The earl came here looking for her. When he didn't find her, he lost his temper and threatened to dismiss you without a reference. However, this house is mine to administer. You have nothing to worry about.”

She fumbled with her apron. “Yes, m' lord.”

“What's your name?”

“Izzy, m' lord.”

“Then sit down in that chair like a sensible girl, Izzy, and tell me everything that you know about Miss Heather.”

The girl collapsed as if punctured. She perched on the edge of an elegant chair and stared at her red hands. There was no sign of broken furniture, yet only one of what should have been a pair of vases still stood on the mantel, and the wall was marked here and there, as if the plaster had been damaged by a blow.

“I don't know nothing, m' lord. She never told me nothing about herself.”

Though strangely reluctant, Ryder strode over to an interior door and opened it. It was only a simple, white-painted bedroom with a pale-green carpet. Delicate gilt tracery ran around the ceiling. Not exactly the bedchamber the world might expect of a notorious courtesan.

He stared for a moment at the dumb sheets and ivory coverlet. Had she shared that bed with Hanley? As if his mouth and throat had just been seared by a flame, it felt painful to swallow. He closed the door and turned back to face the maid.

“Miss Heather never said anything about her family or her childhood? Where she came from?”

“Nothing, m' lord.”

“When she left here with Lord Hanley, did they travel alone?”

“I couldn't say, m' lord. I don't know nothing about that.”

“Never mind. What about her personal possessions?”

A second door opened on a small study with a shelf of leather-bound books. Some of the spines were scored, as if a blade had been dragged diagonally across them. Others were haphazardly piled, as if they had been thrust back too hurriedly after being flung from the shelves.

“She took some of her things with her,” the maid said. “But the rest of her clothes and the things in her dressers, Lord Hanley ripped up like a demon. He broke some of the china, too. I didn't know what to do. I mended what I could and put a fresh cover on the bed.”

“He attacked the bed?”

The maid nodded, her face on fire. “Even the mattress—it was all cut up with a knife.”

Ryder choked down the flames that seemed to be searing his throat. “What about her jewelry?”

“She took all of that with her, m' lord. Lord Hanley didn't find anything valuable.”

A little shock, like a light blow, paralyzed him for a second. “Did he seem to be searching for something?”

“I don't know, my lord, I'm sure. He was very angry, like a bull just let out of a barn. Shall I pack up what's left of her things? Do you want the rooms for another lady?”

“No. Leave everything here! I'll keep the rooms as they are. You're a good girl, Izzy. You may stay on here.”

“Very good, m' lord.”

Her pale eyes watched him as he tugged on his gloves. He strode to the door to the hallway, anxious to be gone. Had that pristine set of white sheets and ivory coverlet not been her choice, at all—simply the maid's attempt to put things to rights after Hanley had rampaged through the bedroom? Had she and her lover slept in red satin or black silk? He didn't want to know.

Yet he did want the answer to something that seemed to make very little sense:
Lord Hanley didn't find anything—

“I did think that she might have come from Derbyshire, m' lord.”

His heart lurched. He stopped and turned back. “Derbyshire? Why?”

“She said once that even London was not so noisy as a Derbyshire mill. That's all.”

“Here,” Ryder said, reaching into his pocket. “Take it! It's all right. It's a sovereign. For you.”

Tears rolled slowly down the maid's face as she bit at the coin and watched Lord Ryderbourne stride back out of her life.

 

 

THE Earl of Hanley occupied his usual place at his club. They had first met as boys at Harrow and avoided each other ever since. Ryder studied him for a moment, trying to see him through a woman's eyes. The man was handsome, he supposed: lean and tall, with a firm chin and blond hair, silver gilt at the temples.

Lady Hanley was a pale, meek creature, who mostly stayed in the country with their growing brood of young children, while her husband lived in town.

There was nothing unusual in the earl's slightly uneven attitude to his marriage vows, nor in that schoolboy relationship.

Hanley folded his newspaper and glanced up as Ryder approached.

“You've come to ask me about my mistress?” he asked with a curl of the lip. “So very tiresome! The whole town is abuzz with speculation. Did I murder her in a passionate frenzy and dismember that delectable body? Or did she run off with some princeling from Bohemia?”

“Do tell,” Ryder said as he sat down. “Which is it?”

Hanley drummed his fingers on the table beside his chair. “Neither, of course, is the case. Though of the two, the image of the black-hearted assassin leaves me looking a little less the fool.”

“Though you did not, of course, murder her.”

Something flickered in the blue gaze for a moment. “What do you think?”

“I think it possible, but unlikely. So—for whatever reason—she must have run away from you. Humiliating, but hardly momentous.” Ryder picked up a newspaper and idly scanned the headlines. “I assume she will eventually return to her rooms in Blackdown Square?”

“I've no idea,” Hanley said. “I'm no longer paying her rent.”

“But I am. You must know that the rooms belong to the duchy.”

Fingers still tapping, Hanley stared at him for a moment. “I wash my hands of the wench. When she returns to town on the hunt for a new protector, you're welcome to her.”

Ryder let his voice turn to ice as he set down the paper. “If she'll have me, I hardly need your permission.”